Fugit Irreparabile Tempus?

The famous adage "Tempus Fugit", or in it's full form "Sed fugit interea, fugit irreparabile tempus, singula dum capti circumvectamur amore" is roughly translated as "But meanwhile it flees: time flees irretrievably, while we wander around, prisoners of our love of detail." The crux of the matter here to me is that we can never get our time back once it has passed. (Short of the advent of time-travel and a way to prevent the inherent paradoxes that is.)

So the question is, if we can't get our time back, then what can we do? We can do our best make sure that our time is well spent.

If we are ever able to create time machines, they better look like this.

Now, I don't want to argue that games are a waste of time that could be better spent elsewhere. Nothing of the sort. In fact, this post isn't strictly about video games or the value of various recreational activites in comparison to each other. At a push, it may be more applicable to TV and Music; but really, as the title and opening paragraph suggests, it's quite literally about time. Or perhaps more accurately, a lack of it.

So let's say we have chosen to devote a large proportion of our time to gaming, TV, film and/or music - an assumption that should be true in the case of most people reading this - what can we do to make sure we maximize our limited time?

A Possible Solution

Firstly, let's look at some timescales for many of our favorite pastimes. (I'm focusing only on the digital media area, and the reason will be clear shortly.)

The average film length, though disputed, is roughly in the area of 2 hrs.

A TV series is usually around 45 or 25 minutes without commercials.

Like feature films, the average song length has gradually become longer over the decades and now lies in the region of 4 minutes.

Games vary wildly, especially factoring in replayabilty and multiplayer.

In actual fact though, actual length has no effect on my proposed solution...

What would you say the simplest way you could make these activities twice as effective? Perhaps to complete them in half the time?

And my proposal is as simple as that: Essentially to click the fast-forward button. If we can enjoy these diversions in half the time, we open up the other half to other activities. Or possibly better yet, to be able to watch or listen to twice as much content. (For the time being, I'm going to exclude games but I will come back to them.)

Limitations

So in one fell swoop, I've just made your homelife twice as productive. Perfect, you can thank me in the comments section...

In seriousness though, this idea is not without it's limitations, nor am I the first person to have thought of it. There are even phone aps designed for this purpose. One even has a slogan that summarizes my thought's nicely:

"You can understand speech at a much faster pace than it is spoken, So take advantage, speed up playback, and optimize your time."

Now let's address some of the limitations. Firstly, I'm not talking comical sped up audio, or the chipmunk effect. What I suggest is time-stretching, where the original pitch is preserved. (Though to speed up content I suppose it's really time squashing.)

Obviously, in the case of videos, the footage may at first seem reminiscent of the silent movies of old. But our brains have an outstanding ability to adapt, and it's amazing how quickly you can become desensitized to the seeming temporal phenomenon. In reality, you may actually be processing the content closer to your brains natural capacity.

See how easy WALL-E, aka Johnny Five makes it look?

There are however instances where watching/listening at increased speed may not be effective. For example, for full musical comprehension, even normal speed may be too fast initially. Then there are some films and shows where the dialogue and story progress perhaps too fast to follow while viewing at an increased rate. But for general listening and viewing, we are able to cope with more than we generally challenge our minds with.

What about games?

Now games present issues of their own, and I have not currently been able to test this in any real way, outside of the context of things like the later levels of Tetris. So though it may be technically feasible to increase the speed of a game engine, without experience I don't really know how the gameplay and difficulty would be affected. Maybe with specific programming to control the difficulty it could be feasible, though I can hardly see developers catering for this niche.

Or maybe I am underestimating gamers. Perhaps we would adapt. "Yes, those fan blades and lasers are now moving twice as fast, but so does my character." After a period of adjustment, it may become second nature.

How about you?

Are you already speeding up your digital content to maximize your time? Have you tried it, but found it too off-putting, or that it detracts from the experience just too much? Maybe you have briefly considered the concept but not much beyond that. Or perhaps this is something new, it may be that you consider this to be the worst idea you've ever heard.

If you're a 'time-squashing' veteran, then please let me know your thoughts and experiences. If not, then why not try it out for yourself? It doesn't necessarily have to be twice as fast; it could be 1.5x or 1.25x normal speed for example. (On the other end of the scale, it could be a factor greater than 2x as fast.)

Anyone who has experimented with game speeds, I'd also be very interested to hear of your methods and experiences.

If you've got this far, hopefully you're not wishing that you could get back the time you've spent reading this post.